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Four protesters have been killed and more than 100 people injured in
Bangkok as pro- and anti-government rivals face off in escalating street
clashes, with police unleashing tear gas and water cannons on the
riotous crowd on Sunday. Embattled Thai Prime Minister Yingluck
Shinawatra was forced to flee from the police sports club where she was
based to a secret location after protesters stormed the compound.

Opponents of Yingluck, a coalition of urban royalists and traditional
elites known by the collective moniker Yellow Shirts, have accused her
of being merely a proxy for her brother, billionaire former Prime
Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Thaksin was ousted in a military coup in
2006 and was convicted of corruption in absentia, but maintains popular
support among the nation’s rural poor in the highly populated northeast
part of the country. His supporters are known as Red Shirts.

Sunday was deemed the deadline for week-long attempts to oust the
Yingluck administration, and demonstrators set about destroying
barricades and attempting to enter several government compounds across
the Thai capital, also throwing rocks and petrol bombs. “We’re very
concerned about the violence and we’ve been urging both the protesters
and government to respect rights,” says Phil Roberton, Bangkok-based
deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, which has been closely
monitoring unfolding events.

Protesters at Government House, where Yingluck’s regular office is
located, tried to gain access to the compound by hauling away protective
barriers using pick-up trucks. Their attempts were met with water
cannons and tear gas, although some canisters were promptly thrown back
at the security forces. More than 21,000 police and 1,000 soldiers have
been deployed to protect 10 government installations from being
occupied.

On Saturday, around 70,000 Red Shirts, who had gathered near
Bangkok’s Rajamangala National Stadium to show support for the current
administration, clashed with students, mainly antigovernment Yellow
Shirts, emerging from neighboring Ramkamhaeng University. About 8 p.m.
local time, one person was killed when a shot was fired into the campus.
Red Shirts had emerged from the stadium to support their comrades after
several people were pulled from cars and beaten on the belief that they
were Thaksin supporters.

Fighting continued in the surrounding area into the night, and by
morning busloads of Red Shirt supporters were leaving the capital after
leaders said their safety could not be guaranteed. “With the main group
being set home, hopefully we won’t see that conflict between these two
mass movements,” says Robertson. “But there’s always a worry of agent
provocateurs from one side or another trying to cause problems.”

By Sunday, Yellow Shirt protesters had turned their attention to
government buildings instead. Although things appeared calmer toward the
middle of the day, past experience shows that the situation can quickly
escalate further when the cooler evening approaches and more people
come out onto the street.

Yingluck, who won landslide election in 2011 to become Thailand‘s
first female prime minister, insists that force would not be used to
disperse the crowd and called for negotiations, a plea turned down by
protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban. Instead, he called for a general
strike Monday to bring down the government.

A former Deputy Prime Minister for the opposition Democrat Party,
Suthep urged his supporters to surround various ministries, headquarters
of the national and city police as well as the prime minister’s office
at Government House. Normally bustling shopping malls were shuttered as
Bangkok experienced its worst violence since some 90 people were killed
and 2,000 injured in similar street clashes in 2010.

This post has been updated from the original version with the latest casualty figures.